Themes
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Themes

1.2 Themes

There are several dominant themes in Nigerian history that are essential in understanding contemporary Nigerian politics and society:

  1. The spread of Islam, predominantly in the north but later in southwestern Nigeria as well, began a millennium ago. The great extension of Islam within the area of present-day Nigeria dates from the nineteenth century and the consolidation of the caliphate. This history helps account for the dichotomy between north and south and for the divisions within the north that have been so strong during the colonial and postcolonial eras.
  2. The slave trade, both across the Sahara Desert and the Atlantic Ocean, had a profound influence on virtually all parts of Nigeria. The transatlantic trade in particular accounted for the forced migration of perhaps 3.5 million people between the 1650s and the 1860s, while a steady stream of slaves flowed north across the Sahara for a millennium, ending at the beginning of the twentieth century. Within Nigeria, slavery was widespread, with social implications that are still evident today.
  3. The colonial Era, the colonial era was relatively brief, lasting only 60 years or so, depending upon the part of Nigeria, but it unleashed such rapid change that the full impact was still felt in the contemporary period. On the one hand, the expansion of agricultural products as the principal export earner and the corresponding development of infrastructure resulted in severely distorted economic growth that has subsequently collapsed.

In the six decades since the independence of Nigeria in 1960, a period as long as the colonial era, Nigeria has experienced a number of successful and attempted military coups d’état and a brutal civil war, let corrupt civilian governments siphon off the profits from the oil boom of the 1970s, and faced economic collapse in the 1980s, corruption still on the rise, security at its worst, terrorism including Boko haram, battling with cessation from east and the west and other internal social wars. As the most populous country in Africa, and one of the ten most populous countries in the world, Nigeria has a history that is important but that also bears scrutiny if for no other reason than to understand how and why this nation became as it is today.